Finding Aids and Catalog

Updates have been made for a couple of different access methods to information about Utah State Archives records available for research.

For the first time since beginning to use an online catalog powered by Horizon (SirsiDynix), we did a complete update of catalog records which yielded at least 200 new record series not previously found in the catalog. To be included in the catalog, a series needs to be considered permanent (i.e. historical) and have holdings available from the Archives. These holdings could be original paper, microfilm, or both (electronic formats have not generally made their way into the permanent collections–yet).

One of the major updates found in the catalog record are links to series inventories or finding aids. This is because of the new web site with a different URL. As part of the grant-funded project to update finding aids to the latest EAD (Encoded Archival Description) format, we took the opportunity to review the content of all finding aids before creating new documents to put online. We are also making some inventories available online for the first time which were previously only in the research center as paper temporary lists. While there are still some to finish reviewing and publishing, over 1,100 are now online.

All series inventories are also simultaneously available in the Mountain West Digital Library EAD Statewide Index (that’s the grant project). This is an exciting result of almost two years of work with thousands of finding aids from the largest repositories of historical archival collections in Utah all in one place.